Waging a war on Internet crime

After chatting with a 13-year-old girl over the Internet for a month, a North Carolina man recently crossed state lines with the expectation of having sex with her. It was short-lived.

"Unfortunately for him, he was met by big, hairy policemen," said Captain Rick Wiita of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office in Virginia, where a cybercop posed as the minor. "We haven't done total forensics yet, but we have reason to believe he was actively involved with other children."

Whether it's soliciting sex from minors or distributing child pornography, such crimes against children have risen dramatically in the past several years as Internet usage has soared.

"With the growth of the Internet, we are confronted with many new potential opportunities, but also new risks, especially with children," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) via e-mail. Goodlatte has supported law enforcement efforts against such crimes.

"Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown discovered in 1998 that 20 percent of missing teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17 disappear because of someone they met while chatting on the Internet," Goodlatte said. "This link is disturbing, to say the least, and illustrates the growing problem of Internet crimes against children."

To keep pace with the problem, the federal government, in conjunction with state and local law enforcement agencies, has established task forces geared toward investigating crimes, training personnel and reaching out to the community.

That effort, coupled with advances in technology, such as a secure portal to exchange extremely sensitive information and expertise from the private sector, may help stem the increasing tide of such incidents, officials said.

Leading the high-tech crackdown are the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces, regional programs funded by the Justice Department.

Justice launched the task force project after then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and Ernest Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), testified in Congress that the federal government couldn't do it alone. They said state and local law enforcement agencies needed to be enlisted in the fight.

State and Local Cyber Units

Congress provided $2.3 million in special appropriations to create what amounted to "law enforcement cyber units" around the country, said Ron Laney, director of the child protection division at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs, which oversees the ICAC task force program.

Every year since then, the government has increased funding to create and sustain the ICAC task forces.

This year, funding grew to $6.5 million, said Laney, adding that the Bush administration's proposal for the next fiscal year is $12.5 million. Thirty task forces have been set up nationwide, including one in Bedford County. Another six have been proposed for development by the end of the year and possibly another four or five next spring, he added.

Laney said he doesn't foresee funding for ICAC task forces drying up anytime soon. The task forces not only investigate Internet crimes, but also help train and provide technical assistance to other state and local law enforcement agencies. In fact, the federal government also provided start-up money to those satellite law enforcement agencies for computer equipment, training and sometimes personnel, Laney said. Nearly 90 such agencies have received funds.

"The issues of child exploitation are exploding and getting bigger," said Ruben Rodriguez, director of NCMEC's exploited child unit. "More individuals are using the Internet to entice children to disseminate illegal content, child pornography. Obviously, this communication medium is facilitating the exploitation of the world's children."

The exploited child unit provides leads to federal agencies, such as the FBI, Customs Service and U.S. Postal Service, state and local task forces, and other agencies through a cyber hot line, and acts as a resource center.

Operation Blue Ridge Thunder

The impetus for cracking down on Internet-related crime could hardly be more compelling. In 1998, the 82- employee Bedford County Sheriff's Office, located in southwestern Virginia, came across an Internet-related child pornography case. Poking around the Internet, deputies found even more disturbing images, prompting one investigator to take on a part-time role of cybercop.

"Decent people have no idea what child pornography is," Bedford County's Brown said. "The images are the most horrendous images, horrible images you can find. We download them by the thousands. It's amazing the images that are out there on the Web and are available for anyone who wants to go into that particular arena."

His office then applied for and was awarded a Justice grant — about $200,000 each year for the past four years — to create and maintain an ICAC task force. That money funded an additional investigator, administrative assistant, supervisor and necessary computer and other technologies. The undercover cyberspace patrol is called Operation Blue Ridge Thunder.

Bedford County has had a 100 percent conviction rate, prosecuting 28 cases, Brown said, while referring more than 600 cases to other agencies nationally and internationally.

In many cases, such as the recent capture of the North Carolina man — called a "traveler" in law enforcement parlance — investigators pose as children in cyberspace to establish contact with individuals with less than law-abiding motives. Every keystroke is logged, Wiita said, and all evidence is collected meticulously to perfect a case.

But despite the many successes across the nation and the world, law enforcement and other officials said it's not getting easier.

"We're just inundated with cases," said Wiita, who is in charge of Operation Blue Ridge Thunder. "My people are just running ragged."

New technology, however, may help ease the burden.

Better Information Sharing

The ICAC board of directors, composed of the heads of each of the task forces and other participating groups, have recently begun testing a new secure Web portal called the Law Enforcement Data Exchange, or LEDX.

They hope LEDX will enable task forces and other agencies to securely share sensitive information files and photos in developing investigations, training practices and even educational tools for parents and children.

"The idea also is to put a lot of their Web content in LEDX so they can exchange information of best practices, standards, safety presentations," Rodriguez said.

One of the biggest problems ICAC groups had was securely communicating with each other and other agencies, said Larry Hunt, chief engineer and chief executive officer of the Manassas, Va.-based Integrated Digital Systems/ScanAmerica Inc., which created LEDX based on technology developed by Xerox Corp. (see box, Page 44).

"And because there was not a methodology of technology that they were using to do that, cases would be lost, they got too long, information couldn't be exchanged," said Hunt, who also is a sworn officer in Virginia and a lieutenant in the Bedford County Sheriff's Office. "People who may have been in someone's custody would be let go because [officers] didn't know there was a pedophile case pending or pornography case."

The portal is hosted and designed by his company, all at no cost to ICAC task forces. LEDX can read 256 Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, and 50 of those can be opened natively inside the repository, he said. Access to that information is tightly controlled.

To users first entering LEDX, the site appears to be only two pages deep. Users will be able to access or edit other pages based on the privileges assigned to them. Until they log on, information is not visible.

"So if someone was to hack [into] the Web page, there's nothing for them to see," Hunt said. "All the files are encrypted. There's no file structure. There's no name. There's no way for you to go in to say, 'Oh I'm looking for this — there it is,'" he said.

The system also has a high-level search engine that can provide law enforcement officers with excerpts or specific information on an individual, such as aliases, for example.

Besides ease of use and better information sharing to speed along cases, the system can eliminate mishandling of extremely sensitive and graphic case material.

"We had people go ahead and FedEx us cases, which is pretty standard," Wiita said. "And the next thing you know, the secretary two doors down gets the package, opens it on up. They open up images of child pornography and our evidence. OK, so what happens to our chain of evidence now? It's contaminated.

"It happened one time. It was a nightmare. We didn't want it ever to happen" again.

The portal may have a significant impact on investigations, but testing is still in the "embryo stage," said NCMEC's Rodriguez.

"In the long run, what you're hoping to do, if you want to put case-related information in there, you want to make sure nobody has access to that information other than the contributing parties and members of the group," he said. So one of the selling points is "encryption within encryption within encryption."

Integrated Digital Systems/ScanAmerica is absorbing ongoing expenses, including design fees, to keep the site running. The company also provides LEDX members with Incident Document Management Software Edge 3.0, a case file management system and a way for agencies to transfer paper records and files into LEDX.

"One thing I'm looking for is that I want this to remain free," said Hunt, adding that the private sector should do more to help law enforcement. Hunt has even more incentive to ensure the success of LEDX — he and his wife have been foster parents for 15 years. "Law enforcement does not have the budget to pay for this type of capability."

Reaching Out to Kids

Law enforcement officials are also trying to reach out to parents and children about the dangers of the Internet.

Operation Blue Ridge Thunder has created the Safe Surfin' Foundation, in which representatives from the foundation visit schools to teach children and parents about the dangers of the Internet. Brown said they've given presentations to up to 6,000 children from fourth to seventh grades.

"In other words, how do you safely surf the Internet," he said. "What should you be concerned about, what should you be aware of? And we've also taken a similar program that was developed a little differently and addressed different issues to the parents.

"The Internet is just a tremendous educational tool, but it's got a dark side. And the dark side is getting bigger in this particular area."

Not only do parents have to wake up, but industry also has to help out, Hunt said.

"It's amazing how many parents and how many people, when they hear this, they don't want to hear it," he said. "They don't want to believe this is happening. But we've created a monster here. A monster that gives people that prey on children the ability to get to our kids. And I don't want to preach, but [at] some point in time, the industry needs to take on some liability for this."

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By the numbers

Late last year, the Crimes Against Children Research Center interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,501 children ages 10 to 17 who used the Internet regularly.

Their findings include:

* Very few episodes were reported to authorities such as the police, an Internet service provider or a hot line.

* Only 17 percent of kids and 11 percent of parents could name a specific authority, such as the FBI, the CyberTipline or an Internet service provider, to which they could report an Internet crime, although more indicated they were vaguely aware of such authorities.

* In households with Internet access, one-third of parents said their computers had filtering or blocking software.